Human Sexuality And Sexual Orientation - 1544 Words

Few aspects of human behavior excite as much interest and controversy as sexual orientation. In cultures and societies today, as well as in the past, there is usually an emphasis on a specific orientation as a norm, and typically heterosexuality is perceived as such. This in turn generates a wide range of reaction to homosexuality, from its being seen as â€Å"unnatural† in moral terms, to ideas of it as threatening the stability of a culture. In recent years, however, new perspectives are emerging which strongly support that sexual orientation is by no means so easily defined, and that, when social parameters on sexual behaviors are set aside, the reality is that most people are not strictly heterosexual or homosexual. In the following,†¦show more content†¦In Europe and the Americas, certainly, centuries of Christianity as the dominant faith have vastly influenced thinking based on the conviction that homosexuality is both unnatural and sinful. This is, moreover , true of all Christian denominations, from the Roman Catholic to the Anglican and Episcopalian. Both in past eras and modern times, for example, Anglican and Protestant scholars consistently cite homosexuality as an aberration and a violation of God s will. It is held as an orientation that dangerously threatens orthodoxy by ignoring the tenets of the Bible (Sachs, 2009, p. 20). Not surprisingly, Roman Catholic views are at least equally as strong, and what has long developed in Western cultures is a widespread social condemnation of homosexuality which, as faith provides a groundwork for civil and legal matters, then become embedded in the societies. In plain terms, there has been an historic and consistent rejection of homosexuality as deviant, contrary to Christian morality, and unhealthy for both individual and society. The above considered, it then cannot be overstated how faith-based thinking has greatly influenced social customs and virtually dictated cultural imperativ es regarding sexual orientation. It is in fact arguable that many who denounce homosexuality are by no means devoutly religious; rather, the sheer force of mainstream

Event Marketing †the Lessons from Red Bull Strategy Free Essays

There are few brands that can offer more lessons in how to approach the next generation of marketing than Red Bull. Focusing their strategy on earned media, cultural integration and value creation, Red Bull’s approach is pioneering, and a template that many brands would love to follow. However it’s also proven a difficult strategy to replicate, specifically because just how different it is from the traditional marketing model. We will write a custom essay sample on Event Marketing – the Lessons from Red Bull Strategy or any similar topic only for you Order Now It’s definitely not just about sponsoring a couple of youth events and calling it a day. The scale of Red Bull’s commitment to non-traditional marketing is unprecedented. As far back as a decade ago, Red Bull was spending more than 80% of their significant marketing budget on non-measured media. That’s completely inverse to the traditional marketing formula of focusing on packaged communication messages and the broadcast media to spread them. Core to Red Bull’s success has been their unique strategy of focusing on brand-owned events. It struck me that one of the best ways to make the point about what it takes to seriously succeed at their level and at this game was to show the scale they are operating on. Creating vs sponsoring After sponsoring a handful of existing events early in the brand’s history, Red Bull made a strategic decision to create their own events and have followed this direction consistently ever since. This is a hugely important differentiator for them, and sets them a league apart from sponsor brands : . Early investment becomes equity As a sponsor brand, the more important and popular the event becomes, the more it costs. However Red Bull’s initial investment in creating the event quickly starts paying compound interest, and as the event grows in stature they reap all of the rewards while costing them only the maintenance of re-running the event. 2. Sole-branding Most big events have their platinum, gold and silver sponsors. How much are brands really getting out of these sponsor ships? And if you want to distinguish your brand by putting your name on the event, be prepared to shell out mega bucks. Red Bull on the other hand is the title sponsor for every one of these ninety events, and their branding is ubiquitous and seamlessly integrated into the event rather than tacked on and diluted amongst a hundred other sponsors. There is no question who is putting on the event and responsible for bringing it to everyone and making it happen. 3. Authenticity and credibility For me there is a big difference with a brand simply paying to have their logo attached to something, and with a brand who puts their energy, resources, and creativity to work in bringing something to life themselves, even if it is of course delivered behind the scenes by a host of event and activation agencies. There’s a different level of commitment involved, and a different type of authenticity and credibility is conferred to the brand as a result. Successful creation signals commitment to and deep understanding of the space, whereas anyone can pay to logo-ize something. I’m not saying sponsorship is always a bad thing by any stretch, but I’d argue it definitely lacks the same resonance with the audience. 4. Underground up There is something powerful about how so many of these Red Bull events started out small and local, and have grown to be big and hugely important and influential amongst the athletes and their fans. Athletes themselves say voluntarily that many of these events are as important or second only to the X-Games in stature and importance to their career. This is huge for authenticity with their target. Red Bull has grown up with it’s audience, and them with it. 5. Control Last point on creation vs sponsorship is about control. Namely, when you own the event, you do what you want with it. You control the promotion, the PR, the messaging, the branding, when it happens, where it happens, who’s involved. Everything. Even as a long-term sponsor of an event, you are ultimately at the mercy of the event’s owners and along for the ride. Longevity Many brands flit from campaign to campaign, with their event activation a tacked on component that is rarely addressed consistently. Getting ommitment to ongoing events from a brand can be near impossible. Red Bull is fundamentally different in this regard. They create experiences that generate value for the brand and then they build equity in them consistently over time, just as most brands would do with important product innovations and sub-brands. This is hugely cost effective compared to reinventing the wheel every year, a nd it ensures the brand becomes fundamentally woven into the lives of the athletes and influential consumers they wish to reach, as Red Bull is guaranteed to be part of their year, every year. Plus the audience often scales in size annually. Flugtag and Red Bull Soap Box race are now yearly highlights for many consumers, reaching in-person audiences of hundreds of thousand of people in many cities. In Brazil over one million people turned up for the Red Bull Air Race. From the list below you can see sponsorship of some events such as Flugtag reaching back all the way to 1991, but the vast majority of the events they’ve created over the years are still ongoing, year after year. Depth and breadth. Another key differentiator with Red Bull is the incredible effort they have gone to in order to â€Å"own† action sports and become embedded in youth culture across the board. They have quite literally gone after every action sport you can think of, and in a number of cases essentially created their own sports. They’ve since started attacking music and art with the same vigour. Where most brands are happy to tack on their logo to a handful of events in a year and call it a sponsorship strategy, Red Bull is literally ubiquitous. In many cases they are absolutely essential to the vitality of the sports they sponsor. Use creativity to reinforce the brand and create cut-through Looking down the list, another thing becomes immediately clear — all of the events sound awesome. â€Å"Last Man Standing†. â€Å"Down and Dirty†. â€Å"Exodus†. â€Å"Chopper Assault†. â€Å"City Rage†. â€Å"Heavy Metal†. Red Bull have used crazy sounding and subversive names to build excitement around events before you’ve even heard of them to and to indelibly stamp them as â€Å"Red Bull†. Additionally, Red Bull seek out and create a sense of drama and the spectacular with each event to rival anything Evel Knieval could’ve ever imagined. Downhill bike racing through Rio’s most notorious barrios? Wakeboarding in the dark in a flooded mine? Motocross duelling in bullrings? Roller derby on ice skates? Red Bull has made it their mission to bring barely imaginable experiences into existence, and give them all the spectacle and pomp of a â€Å"real† sport. And then to do it again, year after year. Create shareable content and earn your media How can Red Bull possibly afford all this? Well, they do the opposite thing most brands do. Most brands spend a tiny bit on content, and then 10x as much on media to try and spread that content as far as possible, because people aren’t really that interested in what they are saying so they have to get it in front of eyeballs by force. Which of course then diminishes the value of reaching those people, given they would rather you weren’t. Red Bull was doing earned media before it was a buzzword. They invest in unique, compelling experiences, and in the creation of content from those experiences. They get a significant amount of very deep and powerful brand interaction at the actual experiences themselves, both from participants and spectators. And then through a combination of PR, word of mouth, and pull media channels they get an absolute ton of exposure of their content. And through platforms like their popular Facebook page, content-rich website, Red Bulletin, and a legion of popular microsites and brand communities like FMXWorld, Red Bull can legitimately claim to be a media brand in its own right at a time when most brands are still talking about the idea. The reason Red Bull is so exciting as a brand and a case study to so many is they’ve flipped the traditional advertising model on it’s head. They invest most of their budget in experiences, content and media assets, and allocate comparably little to actual media itself. They trust if they build cool things, people will seek it out and talk about it, and they are right. From a Brandweek article from 2001: In the antithesis of any major’s marketing plan, Red Bull buys traditional advertising last. Only when a market is deemed mature does the company begin a media push. The idea is to reinforce, not introduce, the brand. â€Å"Media is not a tool that we use to establish the market,† said vp-marketing David Rohdy. â€Å"It is a critical part. It’s just later in the development. † The brand spent $100 million in the U. S. last year, according to the company Measured media spending was only $18. 9 million last year, up from $9 million in 1999, per Competitive Media Reporting. In a way their model is to first build targeted, ubiquitous relevance rather than broad mass awareness. They don’t blast out, they focus deep and then bubble up. And the latter approach gives them a much stronger and longer-lasting foundation for their activity, and costs them less. Paid media fits into the mix later to solidify the position, but it’s an enhancer rather than the foundation. Mix global platforms and local activation Red Bull is looking for the ultimate blend of local relevance and cost-effective impact. So they have a chaotic but effective mix of global platforms such as Flugtag and Air Race and tens of locally focused events. Many events start out locally and then get rolled out across regions as the template is perfected. Living and creating with your audiences I think I got this insight out of one of the many great Mobile Youth presentations on Red Bull. Basically the point is everything Red Bull do is about creating and living with their audience, rather than messaging at them. What else? I think you can probably tell from this post and the preceding list that I’m a massive fan of Red Bull’s strategy. It’s unique, it’s effective, and it has a lot to say about where the next generation of marketing is heading. Would love to hear what other lessons you’ve taken from Red Bull’s approach, and what other brands you think are doing this right. How to cite Event Marketing – the Lessons from Red Bull Strategy, Papers

Fitness Training Essay Example For Students

Fitness Training Essay Most fitness and training facilities now have stability balls, foam rolls, balance boards and other fun toys as part of their conditioning equipment. These are part of a new trend in the strength and conditioning field called functional training. Definition Functional training is the action of training function, a general term that meaning role or duty. Functional training is the science of training the body to meet the specific demands of life and sports. It is based on 1) the principle of specificity and 2) muscle function. The principle of specificity also known as SAID (Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands) means that the body responds and adapts specifically to the type and amount of physical demands under which it is placed. In other words, you only improve what youve specifically trained. Since muscle form dictates the role and function of each muscle, muscle needs to be trained the way it is designed to function. Origin Functional training is nothing new and comes primarily from the rehabilitation field. For many decades, therapists have been experimenting with ways of helping their patients regain function. Their goal is to retrain muscles to work properly using special exercises. In their quest to help their patients to become more functional, they have a developed functional training approach. Traditional vs. Functional Traditional strength training usually consists of trying to develop strength and build muscle through isolating specific muscle groups. This type of training could be called dysfunctional training and only develop segmental strength. Traditional strength training is adequate for building muscle but it does not train the body to meet the specific demands of life and sports. It does not reproduce real life conditions and only serves to create non-functional strength. Peter Twist, Vancouver Canucks Strength and Conditioning Coach, explains: Typical strength training attempts to develop the body through a piecemeal approach, isolating specific muscle groups. Worse yet, this is often done with the body unloaded, sitting stationary on a machine while moving one isolated body part through a controlled range of motion, usually in a strict linear, straight ahead motion. Traditional strength training train isolated muscle function while functional training train the body to work as a unit. The central nervous system is programmed to make the body function as a unit, not to work in terms of isolated muscle function. Functional training is functional since it trains the body the way it has been designed to function. Benefits of Functional Training This type of training has many benefits but the most important one being that it creates a healthy, well-conditioned body. Some of the major benefits are: to develop kinesthetic awareness and body control to improve Posture to improve muscle balance to decrease incidence of injury to improve athletic performance to have a positive effect on spinal health to enhance movement efficiency to give a more narrow-waist look (as a result of an improved posture) to improve both dynamic and static balance Functional training offers more benefits overall than traditional strength training. A combination of both is still possible if you are looking for the benefits of functional training while looking to specifically develop muscles. As a rule of thumb, always perform functional training first when your nervous system is still fresh. Functional Exercises Highly functional exercises need to facilitate as much multi-joint involvement as possible to create muscular and joint interdependency ; it also need to challenge the body with proprioceptively enriched exercises in an unstable environment that excite and develop the nervous system says Mark Cibrario, Owner of a personal training studio and expert in functional training. In each movement, various muscles are involved and they all play a different role. The central nervous system, responsible for muscle activation, is programmed for integrated kinetic chain movement which involves the agonist (prime mover), antagonist (opposite to prime mover), synergists (assist prime mover), stabilizers (which stabilize joints while prime movers and synergists perform movement), and neutralizers (which counteract unwanted action of others muscles), all these together work to reproduce an efficient movements. Recycling Essay The body is not designed for isolated muscle function. Each movement requires an integration of various muscles. It has been shown that the body responds better to training in an unstable environment .